


The Isolate Slow Faults

by FrostedFox



Category: Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 23:19:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5393981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostedFox/pseuds/FrostedFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tethered to the devil by his will and her desire to save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Isolate Slow Faults

**Author's Note:**

> I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:   
> It is what you fear.  
> I do not fear it: I have been there.
> 
> Is it the sea you hear in me,   
> Its dissatisfactions?  
> Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?
> 
> \- "Elm" by Sylvia Plath

She wonders, every day, whether God considers the circumstances when making his final judgments. God or St. Peter or whoever it comes down to — do they understand a suicide when the only other option involves sins of a more mortal nature? Not that Jessica is overly religious, or overly suicidal. But she thinks about this. Every day. 

And then there is her continuous rating of days, of events, of experiences. When he tells her she wants something, she wants it. And so the sex, the rape, doesn’t hold up against the murder and pain inflicted on others. He never tells her to enjoy that, and perhaps she is grateful for this. But when he wants her — at least in the beginning — he makes sure she wants him too, and it is only afterwards that the nausea sets in. He watches her blanche and pull away each morning, when too much time has passed. He tells her everything is fine.

And perhaps he has never known, never with certainty, whether anyone really wanted to be close to him or if he compelled them to. He rarely waited to find out and his spoiled behaviour drew immediate distaste in others. He couldn’t know, not anymore. It was too late. But the honesty is brutal. “Tell me, did you enjoy that, Jessica?”   
She opens her mouth to speak but he realizes his mistake in time. “Tell me you loved it.”  
“I loved it.”  
He never knew what she would have said, but he feared it, and feared for her if he heard her say it. She could be so ungrateful. 

He’s not a selfish lover and she is always, deep down, surprised by this. He is gentle when he touches her and though she doesn’t really want it (“You want me.” Oh God, she wants him) she squirms and grits her teeth. His fingers are long and careful, his mouth so hot, his teeth … but then he is on her and his hands hold her hands and he never, ever tells her what to do because he wants to know what she would do. He only tells her how to feel. She wants him, she loves him, and she wraps her legs around his and demands a breakneck speed. He almost tells her to slow down. Almost.

When they are alone together no one is getting hurt. Jessica likes this, she likes Kilgrave in good spirits. Of her own free will she is happier then. Not happy, but happier. But he can get bored. He plays with his control of her. Timing it. Leaving commands for too long, waiting to see what she does. She does not jump. She does not attack.  
Or, he’ll command her to do something but without altering how she feels about him. “Sit still, Jessica.” He knows any emotional command has worn off. He undresses her slowly and watches her attempt to flinch. She is perfectly still and she hates every second of it. “Lie back,” he whispers. “Feel it,” he growls. 

One morning he wakes her by brushing his hand against her cheek and her eyes snap open all rage and fire and he tells her she is beautiful. She flushes and her expression softens and she is. Beautiful. She knows she is, she believes she is. It’s a nice feeling and she wants it to continue, but she’s angry. She is stunning rage and though she knows that one informs the other, she just can’t seem to rationalize them both. Kilgrave sighs. “You are happy,” he says, somewhat sadly. He wishes that seeing herself the way he saw her was enough. One day it will be.

Just because his feelings are genuine doesn’t mean that they are right, that he gets to violate her. “I want you,” he whispers. It doesn’t matter. She doesn’t want him. This is disgusting. This is sickening disease running through her blood. He is everywhere. She is useless to the world, useless to herself. Useless to making it stop. She wants to, in every moment he slips, she thinks only of escape. Of killing him violently. And whatever innocent pretext he supposes, it’s not true. It can’t be true because he savours the look in her eye when she hates him. He is the devil incarnate, he is evil. It’s not the power, not the upbringing, not any pain inflicted on him. It is him. Shit happens to everyone but he is one of a few (who do not belong wandering the streets) who savour the agony of other. For this he is the devil.

And her actions, therefore, God cannot hold against her. The mantra helps her to escape.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Sylvia Plath's "Elm" and these final stanzas in particular:
> 
> I am incapable of more knowledge.   
> What is this, this face  
> So murderous in its strangle of branches?——
> 
> Its snaky acids hiss.  
> It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults   
> That kill, that kill, that kill.


End file.
